Bottom trawling is a destructive fishing practice that is carried out by scraping a trawl net across the sea floor to pick up desirable fish. While bottom trawling yields many fish fit for the table, far more harm is done than good. Bottom trawling picks up tons of other, unwanted organisms and plants, from seaweed to coral. It is indiscriminate in its selection, and can destroy the ecosystem of the sea floor. Bycatch can account for 90% of a trawl's total catch. Since weights are needed to hold the net at the bottom of the sea, large areas of benthic habitats can be destroyed while trawling.
Marine Conservation Biology
Institute. Destructive Fishing.
Retrieved from http://www.mcbi.org/what/destructive_fishing.htm
People
are eating down the food web, which means that they are eating more
bottom-dwelling creatures. This
causes more need for bottom trawling, which churns up sediment and kills bottom
dwelling fish, invertebrates, and corals.
More dead zones appear. Fisheries further north have been depleted, so
companies are moving south to catch fish, destroying even more ecosystems.
Pauly, Daniel (9 October
2007). Fisheries and Global Warming: Impacts on Marine Ecosystems and
Food Security. Retrieved From
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/501/
Bottom
trawling reduces habitat complexity.
In areas that don't get much natural disturbance from waves or tidal
currents, like the deep sea, are more affected by bottom trawling than areas
that do. Trawling can collapse
ecosystems and hurt the populations of rare species. Even if bottom trawling is stopped, it is not there is no
guarantee that the areas affected by bottom trawling will return to their
pre-trawl ecosystems. It also
homogenizes the sea floor, which decreases habitat complexity, reduces the
range of some species, messes with reproductive rates, and fragments habitats
and populations.
A
possible solution to the bottom trawling problem are closing areas to fishing
to protect marine organisms and their habitats. Another solution is to modify fishing gear to minimize
contact with the sea floor.
Alaska Marine Conservation Council
(2006). Impacts of Bottom Trawling. Retrieved from http://www.akmarine.org/our-work/conserve-fisheries-marine-life/impacts-of-bottom- trawling
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